As with subscriber numbers, there’s a big gap between the two biggest telcos in the U.S. – AT&T and Verizon – and the rest of the field when it comes to capital spending. Both companies are planning multi-billion dollar investments in their networks in 2018, according to a story by Sean Buckley in FierceTelecom, with AT&T planning to spend $25 billion on capital upgrades in 2018, while Verizon is looking at the $17 billion to $18 billion range.
That includes spending on their mobile networks as they move toward 5G upgrades. It’s a much different story for pure wireline plays.
Number three on the list – CenturyLink – barely hits a dime on the dollar versus AT&T, with $2.6 billion spent last year and a 2018 capital budget pegged at 16% of revenue, whatever that turns out to be. Its priority will be integrating newly acquired Level 3 Communications into its overall operations. According to the FierceTelecom story…
“We have to keep driving profitable growth,” said Glen Post, CEO of CenturyLink during the fourth quarter earnings call. “Most of it will be success based. The allocation of capital [will] shift harder in making sure it’s for return profiles that are higher, take advantage of our on-net footprint, and are predictable whether it’s a cost reduction or driving profitable margin growth.”
Translation: regardless of what we said in order to get regulatory approval of the deal, we’re going to bundle Level 3’s long haul fiber assets into CenturyLink’s monopoly business model. Adios dark fiber.
Frontier is a distant fourth, with a 2018 capital budget of between $1 billion and $1.5 billion and a number one priority of “finding ways to reduce costs”. In other words, it’s going to spend money on its infrastructure only when it absolutely has to – replace burnt out poles in Santa Barbara County, maybe? – or to meet self liquidating commitments, such as those it made to get $2 billion in federal Connect America Fund subsidies. Given Frontier’s possible plans to exit California, that might well be the best it can do.